Midsummer Nights
by piloqutinnguaq
Summary: If love is nothing but chemicals mixing together, we've measured wrong.


It smelled like sugar. Underneath the sugar, something baked. The baked goods must have been made on the stove top since he had caused significant damage to the oven in an experiment on the heat sensitivity of – why was someone making pancakes in his kitchen?

Sherlock knew John would never attempt such an endeavour so early in the day. He was not a morning person. He rolled over to check the clock—7 A.M.—John would still be asleep. John was unreasonably attached to his sleeping routine. Mrs. Hudson had visited her gentleman caller the night before and in any case had never actually used their kitchen. Sherlock pulled himself out of bed to investigate. Sometimes the dullest of things could be the start of an intriguing mystery. Then again, perhaps one of John's girlfriends was attempting to surprise him. Why did John give his girlfriend a key to the flat?

"Good morning," Molly Hooper said cheerfully. She flipped another pancake on to a plate already full. "You didn't have any syrup so I made blueberry. I hope that's okay."

For a very short moment, Sherlock found himself to be incapable of thinking anything. Molly Hooper, _Doctor_ Molly Hooper, was standing in his kitchen making blueberry syrup. Her hair was down, pulled to the right, slightly damp—she had just had a shower. She wasn't wearing any make up and her freckles were visible across her nose. She was exuberantly happy. She had always been an early riser, the first one awake in her family, she probably cooked them breakfast—why was she cooking _him_ breakfast?

She was wearing a men's shirt, which on her made a dress. He noted with some horror that her usual choice of clothing did nothing to flatter her elfish figure. John was dating Molly Hooper—no, he would remember if that happened. He would not have deleted a relationship between the pathologist and his flatmate.

"Sherlock? Hello? Are you still asleep?"

He looked down at her. It wasn't John's shirt. It was_ his_ shirt.

"You don't have to tell me you love me or anything," she said. Her tone was teasing. Molly Hooper did not tease. She leaned forward until their mouths were nearly touching and Sherlock woke up with a start, soaked in a cold sweat, heart racing, alone in his room in 221B.

He had dreamed another dream about Molly Hooper.

* * *

John was not fond of mornings or of waking up. His nights were unsettled ever since he had joined the military. If he was sleeping peacefully, it was a thing to treasure.

Sherlock Holmes did not feel that way.

The sound of a violin, playing some brutal, brackish tune, interrupted John's sleep for the fifth night in a row. He truly had no idea how anyone else could tolerate it, excepting Mrs. Hudson who was both very sweet and mostly deaf. John looked at the clock: 3 AM. Just on time. Sherlock had just finished a long and very interesting case, which usually meant he would sleep, if only for sporadic hours. It did not mean he would be restlessly pacing, creating increasingly dangerous home experiments, and playing the violin at three in the morning. Something was bothering him.

John really, honestly did not want to know what it was. He crushed a pillow across his face, half hoping it would stop the noise and half hoping he would suffocate. The violin only seemed louder.

Maybe he should call Mycroft. That would be appropriate revenge.

The violin playing stopped suddenly. John's first emotion was relief but then he was filled with a horrible fear. Was something _burning_?

John jumped out of bed and sprinted to the sitting room. Sherlock was standing in front of the couch in a dressing gown, freshly played violin on its stand, waving a handful of burning sage like a flare for a rescue boat.

"What are you doing? No, I don't want to know what it is, please stop," John said. Sherlock gave him a vicious glare. "What _are_ you doing, though?"

"I am cleansing the flat. Many indigenous American cultures believe sage is of spiritual importance."

"_Why_?" John immediately regretted asking. Sherlock had been acting strangely, even for Sherlock. John had overheard a call for an MRI appointment the day previous and he was certain he had found test strips for water impurities. Then there was the carefully labelled stack of food samples and what he was sure was a vial of Sherlock's blood separating in the refrigerator.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

John could only stare, slackjawed, as Sherlock began to move about the room, leaving trails of smoke. "What exactly has happened to make you believe there is a ghost in our flat?"

"I did not use the word ghost."

"This is a horrible dream," John muttered, sinking into his usual chair.

Sherlock stilled, the gears of his mind working. "Perhaps. This is the dream and the dreams are reality. Yes, that is possible."

"Or perhaps this is because you haven't had a proper sleep in three weeks. Perhaps this is because you were using three nicotine patches on the last case!"

"It was a three patch problem, John. Nicotine does not have hallucinatory effects."

"On normal people," John said with a derisive snort. "You're purging the flat because you had a nightmare."

"Very good deduction. I may have had some positive influence on you after all."

"You know most people just confide in their friends."

"I fail to see the advantage in describing my dream to you."

"It's what people _do_," John exclaimed, exasperated. "My mother told me the sooner you tell someone the sooner the nightmares go away."

"Is that why you still go to therapy though your limp is no longer affecting you?"

"This isn't about me."

"Very well," Sherlock intoned reluctantly. "Consider this an experiment."

Sherlock was positively sulking as he sat down across from his flatmate. He doused the sage in a nearby bowl. John looked at him expectantly and made a gesture as if to say "continue". Sherlock closed his eyes, fingers steepled beneath his chin, as if he was reliving the dream while he was relaying its events.

"I have had the same dream several times. I wake up at 7AM to the smell of pancakes. I attempt to deduce who is cooking. It is, invariably, Doctor Hooper. She apologizes for making blueberry syrup. She is clearly at home in our flat because she has recently showered and she is dressed in a man's shirt. When she speaks to me, I wake up."

His imagination had invented many explanations for Sherlock's most recent bout of insanity but John had not been expecting that. He pinched himself to make sure he wasn't the one having a nightmare.

"Is it necessary for you to respond or is this adequate?" Sherlock asked impatiently. He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

"You've been having dreams about Molly Hooper—the cute pathologist, the one who is god knows why head over heels in love with you?"

"I believe this is what I have described." He had an odd look on his face since John had used the word _cute_. His eyes remained closed.

"You feel guilty about constantly taking advantage of her?"

"I do not feel _guilty_."

"You're afraid she is going to say no to you one day. No—she _did_ say no to you, didn't she?"

"She was extremely uncooperative the last time I asked to borrow a cadaver."

"Or perhaps you're upset she's paying attention to someone else. At the very least, it will be a lot more difficult to get into Bart's after hours."

"I neither know nor care about Doctor Hooper's personal life."

"Clearly, you do. You did something to upset her. Considering how well she took the Christmas incident it must have been truly horrid. Apologize."

"I didn't say anything that wasn't true."

"You know, if you were… not you, I'd say you had feelings for her. Or at least that you found her attractive."

Sherlock cracked open one eye like a cat unhappy to be disturbed. It was a look the doctor was very familiar with: _John, if you're going to be stupid, please leave_. John let out a monumental sigh. Something occurred to him then—a terrible, awful idea. He stood and clapped his hands together.

"Well, you _are_ you, so that is the best we can do. If you could refrain from the violin," he added. Sherlock fixed him with a penetrating gaze and John fled the room before his flatmate could discover his newly hatched plan. He wondered if he still had Molly Hooper's phone number. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

* * *

Dead people were so much easier to deal with than the living. Cadavers never insulted her or took advantage of her kindness. They weren't manipulative and they could not lie. Doctor Molly Hooper loved working as a pathologist. Chemical analysis and wound categorization were straightforward and she was damn good at it. At thirty one years old, she was already an accomplished professional with several publications and a prestigious job title. She was inarguably plain and her social life was occupied by her cat but at work she didn't have to worry about that. At work, she was _Doctor _Hooper.

Unless, of course, Sherlock Holmes was there. He never failed to make her feel like stumbling, stuttering, awkward, stupid Molly Hooper.

As he strode into the Bart's lab like he was employed there (which her superiors constantly reminded her he was _not_), Molly knew Sherlock wanted another favour. She made a promise to herself she was absolutely not letting him take another head home. John told her he kept them in _the fridge_.

"Molly," he said shortly. She knew him well enough to realize he was gauging her reaction after their row the week before.

"Good morning," she responded. She was still a little angry but her smile was genuine. Sherlock's eyes narrowed and he inspected her face a little too closely. He seemed much more tense than usual. "Do you have another case already?"

"No."

She felt her lungs seize up. He was going to ask her about another of his home experiments and she was going to say yes and her boss would find out and she would be fired. If she was lucky, there would be a family found to claim the body and they would launch a civil suit.

"Your hair is down."

"Um, well, yes, I just got in," she explained, pulling on the mousy locks nervously. "Hadn't gotten to putting it up yet."

"Hm."

There was an unusual silence. Molly fidgeted and wished she had worn her old clothes. She had gone shopping on the weekend to make herself feel better and purchased her first pencil skirt at the sales lady's insistence. Sherlock had undoubtedly noticed and analyzed her motives. He began inspecting the lab with a calculating stare, obviously searching for something. Molly pushed her hair back into a sloppy ponytail as quickly as possible while he was otherwise occupied.

"Is there anything you… needed…or…?" she asked finally.

"I was…" he trailed off, eyes darting to the bench behind her. She could see his mind working and to her great shame her heart skipped a beat. Sherlock turned abruptly and walked out of her lab as suddenly as he had walked into it.

Her phone buzzed the second the door closed behind him.

_I need your help with something. Call me. John_

Molly hesitated for a moment before she redialed the number.

"Hello?"

"John Watson?" she asked. "It's Molly. Sherlock was just here but it didn't seem like he wanted my help."

"Oh, he won't want it. He'll probably kill me. I suppose you should be fine but I have to warn you anyway. He's left, has he? Did he say anything?"

"He… he commented on my hair. I hadn't put it up yet. It was very odd."

"It's worse than I thought," John said dryly. "I need a favour. It's going to sound utterly mad. You have to trust me. If you don't say yes, Sherlock and I will both be dead within the week."

"Oh god," Molly whispered, horrified. "This isn't about a case is it?"

"No, no, nothing like that. One of us is going to murder the other. Or we're both going to die from sleep deprivation."

Molly felt her stomach drop. She had the exact same feeling the following morning, standing outside 221B at 6:52 AM. John's plan was mad. It was utterly mad. Why had she said yes? Why was she so eager to please everyone?

She should have just let Sherlock steal another arm. She could have moved to Australia to study venom toxicities, alone. She could have gotten another cat.

Inexplicably, she found herself opening the door instead.

Mrs. Hudson was asleep, just as John had told her. The building was silent and dark. Her key worked just fine and the kitchen was cleaned and she even found an undamaged pan. Molly moved robotically, putting her coat away in the cupboard and folding up her trousers inside it. The shirt John had given her fell to just above her knees—she had rolled up the sleeves to her elbows to make them manageable—but she had put the short, tight shorts she wore for hot yoga underneath it anyway. She wondered who it belonged to, since it was far too big for John.

The blueberries were simmering by the time she had made the pancake batter. Molly didn't have many people to practice on, just her brothers when she visited home, but she thought of herself as a good cook.

At 7:03, Sherlock stumbled into the kitchen, wrapped in a dressing gown and looking infuriated.

"Good morning," she said as cheerfully as possible.

His eyes snapped toward her. He stopped walking. Time stood still.

"I made pancakes and, um, blueberry, because it's my favourite and I didn't know your…are you alright?"

For the first time in Molly's memory, Sherlock didn't react at all. He seemed _surprised_.

"I could leave," she offered. She clutched the pan with a white knuckle grip. Molly prayed in that moment, as Sherlock took one long step towards her, that John had truly enjoyed his last day on earth. If Sherlock murdered him, she would happily hide the body.

"Are you sleepwalking?" she blurted out, knowing full well a person sleepwalking could not answer. His face shifted as he considered the possibility.

"No," he said finally. His voice sounded odd but it could have been sleepiness. He was entirely too close to her. Molly could feel the dull throb of blood rushing to her head. Why was she so nervous? _Oh, right, John is a lunatic_.

Sherlock reached out and brushed her hair away from her face. It was very slight, very brief physical contact and he immediately retracted. "You're not a hallucination," he stated plainly. His face was very pale and there were long dark marks under his eyes. John was right; the man really had stopped sleeping.

"I should hope not," she scoffed. Her ears burned and she covered her mouth in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, Sherlock. I can leave. I'll just get my…trousers…"

He blinked and looked down at her clothes. Molly tried not to squeal when he pulled on the collar of the shirt, exposing most of her collarbone. "How did you get this? No," Sherlock interrupted her before she spoke, "Of course. How did he know which shirt to give you?"

"You're not really going to kill him, are you?" Molly asked hesitantly. She felt irrationally anxious about the fact she was dressed in Sherlock's shirt, not one John had purchased. Instead of becoming angry, Sherlock smiled. He smiled his widest schoolboy grin, the one he reserved for cases 8 and up.

"Thank you, Molly," he said.

Sherlock Holmes, the world's one and only consulting detective, fainted dead away onto the kitchen floor.

"Oh my god!" Molly shrieked.

There was a curse and a bang from down the hall and then as if summoned, John skidded to a stop before his flatmate's unconscious body. He looked relieved. "Well, maybe he'll sleep for a week now."

"How long has it been?"

"Six—no, seven, today is the seventh day. Did you really make pancakes?"

"_John_!"

"Right, right," the doctor said. He lifted Sherlock's shoulders up and they managed to carry him to the sofa, where he could nearly lie down. "He didn't hit his head or anything?"

"No, he just fell. I can't believe he lasted seven days," Molly added. She cast a pensive look over Sherlock's sleeping face. Sometimes, she had to remind herself he was just a human being.

"Now we know what to do next time," John shrugged. Molly let out an outraged gasp and punched him in the shoulder much harder than she had intended.

"There will not be a next time! Whatever you might think of me I don't usually prance around with no pants in other people's apartments!"

"You didn't wear pants?"

Molly turned scarlet and folded her arms uncomfortably. She grabbed her coat and pulled it tight around her waist. "I'll mail you the shirt," she mumbled, before John could say anything further. "I'm sure he wants it back."

She fled 221B, vowing never to do John or Sherlock another favour ever again. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

* * *

It was an unusually sunny afternoon and he was too warm in his coat, but in too much of a hurry to take it off. The courthouse still had the heat on from the winter. They were using antiquated radiators and dampness permeated the building. John and Mary Watson were ruffled and still dressed in their house clothes with an assortment of winter accessories, as if they had been running towards an emergency. Both of them were timid, even confused. He wrote his name down in loopy cursive. _Sherlock Holmes_.

Doctor Molly Hooper slipped the pen out of his hand and wrote her own name in a clear, clinical print. She smiled shyly, cheeks flushed, still dressed in her white lab coat from work. She had taken her lunch break early—it was only eleven o'clock. She still smelled of preservatives from the autopsy she did that morning and she hadn't put her jewelry back on since she had taken off her latex gloves.

"I cannot say that I love you," Sherlock said. His mouth moved on its own volition. He scarcely thought of the words before they escaped him. "I'm not sure I am capable of love. I'm not sure it exists at all. I cannot say that I love you, but there are more important things than dopamine responses. I can say that if I had to live even a day without you, I would die."

"Sherlock Holmes," Molly sighed. He felt unreasonably anxious. What could she possibly say to offend him? "You are impossible to love. I should know. If love is nothing but chemicals mixing together, we've measured wrong. But you know—I know—I would go to the ends of the earth to make you happy. So, I suppose the least I can do is to keep you alive."

"Well, you've done excellently so far, Doctor Hooper," he commended. Was it appropriate to respond to a vow? He made a mental note to research the matter and then promptly deleted it. He didn't intend to get married again.

John leaned very close to his wife and whispered: "This is the strangest wedding I have ever seen." Mary shushed him but shared his knowing smile. Sherlock shot his best friend a dark look and the doctor held up his hands in defeat. He had plenty of things to say during John's wedding and he had kept respectfully silent. He could have said many things in the waiting room at his own wedding and he _did not_ because clearly Molly was emotionally vulnerable. The pathologist's eyes shimmered with tears for the entire day (happy tears, she assured him, but he had never heard of such a phenomenon).

"If we are going to proceed, I require the signature of the witnesses," the Justice said. John and Mary made themselves useful. Sherlock unraveled his scarf, which he had forgotten he was wearing. He held it in his right hand and Molly let her fingers brush against his left (calloused ring finger indicated she was right handed, as did the tan line from the bracelet she wore on her left wrist) in a subtle, reassuring motion. Why did she feel the need to reassure him? The entire thing had been his idea.

"Congratulations," the Justice droned as he pulled together the legal certificates into two neat piles. He was elderly, on the verge of retirement, probably alone, although he wore a wedding ring; his smile was sincere but unnecessarily solemn considering the informal union he had performed. He had lost his wife of many years to an unnatural death but took solace in delivering others to wedded bliss.

"Don't deduce the minister, for Christ's sake, kiss your wife!"

Sherlock looked down at the irrepressibly happy Molly Hooper. Her mascara was smudged but she grinned back at him as if he had given her the world's finest Christmas present. He felt his own surge of happiness as he leaned toward her, lips brushing together in a practiced but tantalizing motion. As she smiled again, against his mouth, he woke up in a heart-stopping fever on the couch of 221B, alone in the dead of night with his violin stand and his skull.

The flat was enveloped in silence. He nearly tumbled from the too-short loveseat and stifled an unruly curse but his foul mood faded quickly as he stood. The panic he felt upon waking vanished. He hadn't felt so well rested in months. He was brimming with energy, his mind sharpened like an artist's pencil, and the shock of his dream quickly faded into a warm, settled feeling. He was filled with a new sense of conviction. Sherlock Holmes was not to be the victim of his own subconscious. He was the victor. When his brain was functioning at full capacity, the escapades of his dream self would be easily forgotten.

As he opened his computer and began checking his email for new cases, he barely noticed the faint smell of blueberry pancakes hanging in the air.


End file.
